When I first realized Ester had such a great memory, I asked her why she needed the note cards. She explained it like this: She can remember an entire symphony orchestra, a hundred musicians playing at once. But if you ask her what the oboe was doing in the second bar of the third movement, she can’t immediately unravel that information from all the other sounds she absorbed. The cards help her make sense of the music. She can color-code the brass section, so to speak, and keep it separate from the strings and the percussion. She can unwrap the symphony and study it instrument by instrument, line by line.

Without her index cards, the world is a scary, overwhelming place.

“Here.” She holds up a bright-blue card, covered front and back with her neat handwriting. “Tomorrow, when we get close to the secret base, there’s going to be a challenge.”

I try to concentrate. The hot-water bottle is slowly doing its work, relaxing the knots in my belly, but the pain is still blinding. Dev’s voice crackles in my head. Major threat. Need everyone to EVACUATE.

“A challenge?” I manage.

Ester nods. “Standard protocol when someone approaches a base. It says so right here. I don’t know what kind of challenge. Something to make sure we are legitimate. If we’re not, the island will probably destroy us with alt-tech weapons.”

“But that won’t happen,” Nelinha says.

“No,” Ester agrees. “Because…” She looks at Nelinha. “Why won’t it happen?”

“Because we’re going to figure out how to pass the challenge,” she says gently. “We’ll do that while Ana gets some sleep. Remember?”

“That’s right,” Ester agrees. “Ana, that’s why you’re not going to die. Get some sleep.”

She says this like it’s as simple as switching off a radio.

Maybe it is.

I want to join them at the table. I should help them figure out this challenge. But my body is shutting down. Hearing Dev’s voice was too much. The medicine and the heat and the cramps are fighting for dominance, turning my nervous system into a choppy sea. I cling to the sound of my friends’ voices like a life raft.

I close my eyes and drift into the painless depths.

Chapter Twenty-Three

In my dream, it’s the Fourth of July. I’m ten years old. I’m sprawled on a blanket in the San Alejandro Botanical Gardens, waiting for the fireworks to start.

Dev dances around our family’s picnic spot, waving a sparkler. My mother sits next to me, her face swallowed by the shadow of her broad-brimmed straw hat. Her black pearl gleams at the base of her throat. She wriggles her bare toes (she always hated shoes) in time with the John Philip Sousa music being piped over the loudspeakers.